Battered in the polls and facing street protests after a first budget that seems to have been badly misjudged, he's now been caught on videolaughing at an angry and distressed voter on a radio phone-in show.

The woman, who's a grandmother, called in to ask the prime minister how she was expected to survive financially in the wake of tax increases and cuts to public services.

She told him she worked on an adult sex phone line to try and make ends meet.

At this point Mr Abbott can be seen winking at the ABC host, smirking and trying to suppress a laugh.

He then appears to glance over at an adviser and quickly tries to adopt a more concerned expression.

It doesn't look great.

I've written before that sometimes Mr Abbott's so-called 'gaffes' may actually in fact be calculated to add to his "blokey" appeal.

But in a week where he's already been heavily under fire, I suspect this wasn't the case this time.

His Treasurer Joe Hockey has already come across as arrogant in the eyes of many.

First: when he was caught smoking Cuban cigars in the days before delivering his "age of entitlement is over" budget.

And secondly: when it emerged Mr Hockey had danced to the song"This Is The Best Day of My Life" just moments before announcing thousands of job cuts.

It has been my reliable information from impeccable sources (as long as you believe in impeccable in the liberal party) that Tony won't get through winter unscathed... May the god of detritus hear you my son... In some circles, Malcolm is 5 to one, Joe is 25 to one and Pyne a trillion to one. The dark horse is Brandis.

Indigenous groups say Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy may as well be written on the "back of a beer coaster" after the Abbott Government's budget decision to scrap an independent council.

The warnings come as the Council of Australian Governments Reform Council releases its final report, which shows that after five years of government spending on Closing The Gap there have been promising gains in education but the unemployment divide is getting wider.

There are few policy areas more vexed for the major parties than Indigenous affairs and leading Aboriginal figures say the independent reports that the COAG Reform Council provides are vitally important.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, is concerned about the Federal Government's decision to scrap the council in June.

Tony Abbott never understood much about anything, apart from wrecking the joint I believe... We've see the man in action... It's very ugly so far. The amount of Tony's lies has reached sky high and there is no limit. Though I detailed them somewhere in my piddley writings here, I forgot exactly why I called him a turd but I think I did it for good reasons. Be assured too, nepotism is not a dirty words in the Liberal (CONservative) party...

Now, there are small hints of "double dissolution" floating around because Tony is having a quiet plotted war-room tantrum while trying to get away with butchering the fair economy of this country — and trying to con the other side of politics to acquiesce to his folly, by taunting it...

But beware, it will be a hard punch up — though necessary — as one will have to fight tooth and nails.

The merde-och press, already feral against Labor, will go apeshit against anyone who is against the Liberals (CONservatives)... The fanatical spruikers will use all the dirtiest smart tricks in the book, not so much out of enlightened convictions that promotes fairness and equality, but out of spiteful rabid convictions that promote their rich mates opportunism to the hilt...

The sad part here is that many small businesses, very much helped by Labor through the tough time of the GFC — the same businesses now more or less shafted by Abbott's silly May budget — will carry on supporting him because he is "in the same camp" of idealising cash as an end, not as a means. Idiots.

As well, most of the Liberals (CONservatives) rabid right wingnuts refuse to see the reality of our ruthless ways that have had strong impacts on nature and on the planet, including the warming of atmosphere...

In regard to global warming, records after records are broken daily: Floods in Serbia (the worse since record started there, record temperatures in May in Sydney, Australia and many more "changes" to come. Global warming is real. Pricing carbon is one of the better ways to help reduce out emissions sooner than later, without destroying the joint... Tony has no clue. He does not want to know.

“… it doesn’t matter whether you’re a child, it doesn’t matter whether you’re pregnant, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a woman, it doesn’t matter whether you’re an unaccompanied minor, it doesn’t matter if you have a health condition, if you’re fit enough to get on a boat then you can expect you’re fit enough to end up in offshore processing.”

"I'm determined to learn from all of this," the Prime Minister said of his self-immolating lapse in anointing the Duke of Edinburgh with an Australian knighthood, which compounded the adverse impact of the anachronistic, self-indulgent, zero-upside honours system he introduced in his first year.

Abbott is unlikely to learn from this, other than to become even more cautious and robotic. You cannot learn what you refuse to know. He is a bulldog who will not let go of a course of action which, without an end to his bunker insularity, and a change in his relationship with the electorate, will see him removed either before the next election or at the next election.

His party is already moving. The phones are running hot. They will not turn to the deputy leader, Julie Bishop. It will be Malcolm Turnbull.

The seeds of this unnecessary damage were sown a long time ago. Why did Senator Nick Minchin, the senate opposition leader who engineered Abbott's elevation to the party leadership, step down as senate leader within months of Abbott becoming leader? Minchin would leave politics altogether a year later, for a variety of reasons.

Without Minchin, Abbott would never have been leader. Without Minchin, or the gravitas of a Minchin equivalent, Abbott is not going to survive his present course.

Why has the likeable, knockabout Abbott turned into Gillard II? The public never bought Julia Gillard's robotic prime ministerial persona, or the manner by which she took power, which guaranteed her demise long before it happened.

Up until the paragraph previous to mentioning Julia, Paul Sheehan was cooking Tony nicely... Suddenly his stove blew up and he started to compare Abbott and Julia...

Hold on Paul, whether you liked Julia or not, the media poured hell on Gillard for taking Rudd on, a Rudd who did not have the courage to go to a Labor ballot and fight: he knew the results. 0 for him and 100 for Julia. He knew that. Thereafter the media (all the MMMM under the guidance of all the spruikers and News Limited) AND KevinRudd got in bed to damage Labor and Julia Gillard as much as possibly. They were horrible to her. And she survived well, despite all the crap that Tony was throwing at her. She managed to hold back the destructive onslaught on the social fabric of this country from the "business" "community" who made sure that Tony was a shoo-in NOT Malcolm. Another vote that was useful in Tony's leadership ascendancy was that of SLIPPER... who as we all know was shafted by Tony Abbott for placing his hands in the travel allowance cookie jar while Abbott himself did that 30 times over.

Overall, Julia Gillard may have been a thorny rose... but Tony Abbott is a lying heap of shit. NO COMPARISON ALLOWED. And by the way, the media has been sucking to Tony Abbott for so long, the media forgot to investigate the turd. All the Tony melodrama is self-inflicted... Boom!